TOP 5 websites for freelancers. Recommendations from the Startup Depot Residents

A selection of the best and most reliable resources that professionals in every corner of the planet use

Freelance is increasingly gaining momentum in the world, while Lviv and Ukraine are increasingly becoming a kind of Mecca for people who choose to work for themselves from anywhere in the world. According to statistics, our country ranks 4th position in the world by the number of freelancers. Due to the Nomadlist information, Lviv ranks 59th position as one of the most attractive locations for digital nomands in the world.

If you plan to switch to freelance, you also need to understand which platforms will be most helpful for finding your customers and will be safe to pay. We have picked 5 the best freestyle platforms in our opinion, according to the advice of freelancers from Startup Depot business incubator.

Upwork

Fee – 5% – 20% (depends on the price of the contract, the higher the smaller the commission)

Payment – PayPal, Payoneer, direct payment

One of the most popular freelance platforms in the world. The base of almost 1.5 million customers gives freelance specialist from almost any industry an opportunity to find an order for themselves. Most importantly, both short-term and long-term. Recently, the platform launched a premium account for top-level freelancers.

The essence of the change is that by building your portfolio and the projects you worked on, you will be able to choose which projects to show to the potential customer. Instead of throwing your proposal on the “misfortune”, the customer sees in the profile the projects relevant to him that you have picked specifically.

According to the platform statistics, in 2017 the most demanded skilled freelance specialists were Robotics, Blockchain, and Bitcoin. One of the significant disadvantages of the platform due to its massive presence is the large number of specialists from India who offer cheap and low-quality services, so there serious clients and, apparently, professional freelancers leave the platform.

Toptal

Fee – 500$

Payment – Payoneer, PayPal, directly on your personal account

This platform chooses only the “cream” freelance world. As they themselves declare to their customers: “You have a chance to work with the top 3% of the world’s freelancers.” Against the background of other platforms, Toptal is characterized by a rather specific process of selection of freelancers, which consists of 4 stages.

Stage 1 – Testing for language proficiency and personality. It is not too complicated and takes up to 15 minutes of your time

Stage 2 – Technical testing. You are given 90 minutes to solve three tasks. If you decide on two right – you will definitely go further. Tasks are sent according to your data and specification that you send on the eve.

Stage 3 – Technical interview. You will be communicating with one of the company’s engineers. He will give you a few tasks to be solved. It is important to solve all of them if at least one is not – that means you have failed the test.

Stage 4 – Test project. You will be given a project to be implemented in two weeks. After the appointed time, the company engineer will review your results and give the feedbacks. In the case of a positive answer, you become a “resident” of the platform and have access to such projects as Airbnb, Zendesk, and so on.

From the very beginning on the Freelancer you will have to face an intuitively incomprehensible interface and the need to pour money into the stock exchange. Firstly, you need to choose a membership plan that costs from $ 1 to $ 60 a month.

Membership plans determine the number of applications per month, the number of external invoices, the ability to apply for high-paying jobs, the ability to customize the appearance of your profile, and so on. In order to have a sufficient number of applications per month and to find good projects, a membership plan is required at a minimum of $ 10 a month.

You can submit a sponsored application (from $ 4 to $ 50 depending on the project budget) for your application to be higher than others. In this case, applications are listed first in terms of the amount of money paid, but only after the rating.

In addition, there is such a service as placing in a sponsored directory. This service allows you to place you at the top of the list of freelancers in the selected category. This service costs from $ 50 for 7 days.

Guru

Fee – 12%

Payment – PayPal, Payoneer

Guru in most is a platform for both web designers and graphic designers. There are two types of accounts – paid and free. However, because of the great restrictions on the services that you can provide, the free is not worth the consideration. Paid rises from $ 12 to $ 45 a month, depending on the type of service that you will choose. Also, when you purchase an annual subscription you will receive a 50% discount.

To submit an application here you should buy “attempts”. You can buy 100, 250 and 500, attempts which cost respectively $ 25, $ 45, and $ 75. So, in order to work here you need a start-up capital first, the same as on Freelancer. It is also important to understand that the service cannot propose an hourly wage but a fixed amount of money.

99designs

Fee – від 300$ (depends on the contract)

Payment – Skrill, Paypal, AlertPay или Western Union

A platform for photographers and designers. Orders – from designing logos to UI / UX designs. The site is based on the type of competition grounds. The customer publishes a competition with a description and budget, and freelancers submit their ideas and decisions.

The first stage of the competition is 7 days. After that, the customer selects several finalists and they pass into the second stage, which lasts about 2 weeks. From the finalists, one winner is chosen to whom the money for the competition is transferred. The process takes a lot of time. Over the first seven days, more than a hundred freelancers are served on the project.

On the site there is a system of marks for contests. “Blind” means that no one other than the customer will see your ideas and suggestions. «Guaranteed» – this label guarantees that the customer will choose the winner and pay him the money. With the submission to the projects without these signatures, then there is a very high probability of the theft of competitive works. The payment level is close to the Upwork.